Court Green in Session

The premiere issue of Court Green, an annual magazine associated with Columbia College Chicago, exhibits a wide range of poetry (from Maxine Kumin to Ann Lauterbach; from Annie Finch to Joanne Kyger), most of it entertaining and some of it downright stellar. Here's the skinny:

Price: $10
Size: 168 pp (76pp general poetry; 60 pp poetry on film; 14 pp for twelve reviews)

This will be a little unfair, because there's so much that's notable, but anyway here's what really stood out for me on first reading:
• three poems by Joy Katz, "this stem poised now to write / deliberate as a coronation."
• Dodie Bellamy's piece from Fat Chance, "I spend 2000 years frozen underwater staring, waiting, dreaming of fat little fairies. The shadows do not introduce themselves. I'm a black dress and he's black Dockers and a brown shirt. The jet of his urine spells out apocalyptic messages in its expiring arc."
• Kyger's two poems, "You are the sum / of all you 'know' / and the more you forget / the more ordinary / you are really nothing / special   so why / all the anxious push-push / just hang // the clothes on the line"
• Finch's three poems, "and in the crown of a new place, / the rain carving out an old space, / dropping around the new space / as if it were old again.:
• Probably my favorite poems in the issue are the two by Carrie Comer. They reminded me of the first time I read John Olson, a selection of his poems back in 93 or 94 in New American Writing, which really blew me away. Anyway, here is the opening of "Miami in September":

   I am the heart of the burning chopper,
   the burning muscle in the fist. Below me, a green ribbon of fish.

   The heart, the flame, the firelock,

   fie for shame. In my other life, I stroll the sea floor
   masquerading as a man.

• Bill Kushner has a poem called "Film Noir" which reminds me: have any of you, my non-existent readers, noticed the rash of film noir poems lately? I went through a film noir poem phase a few years ago—unfortunately mine all sucked. The ones I've been seeing haven't sucked, but they haven't exactly made me jealous or anything. See, here's one called "Double Indemnity". Poor Kevin Young: his next book is a film noir novel in verse, but readers may have o.d.'d on film noir poems by time it comes out.

• Bellamy's review of the movie Sylvia, which doesn't just stand out because it's a movie review in a poetry magazine, "Plath wears red when she meets Hughes, Plath wears red when she marries Hughes, and after her suicide, when the paramedics carry out her corpse, a bright red cloth is spread over the stretcher. That's about as deep as this movie gets."

Criticisms: 1. Some of the poems are entertaining (or would be) to the point of being slight. 2. Range is great, until you hit upon consecutive poems that offer you nothing, and which you wouldn't be reading if the magazine had a stronger focus; still, I admit, I will usually err on the side of inclusiveness, so this is really only a half-criticism. 3. A subscription plan would be welcome, and I hope one will be added; even though the Court is worth the ten smackaroos cover charge, as small an enticement as three issues for $27 might pull more readers in.